Some Olympic Thoughts

With the 2008 Beijing Olympics ending today, the following thoughts come to mind:

Just how small can you be and continue to be called an Olympic Athlete? If memory serves me right, the Chinese "women" gymnasts averaged 77 pounds, while the much larger Americans topped the scales at about 90 pounds. The mantra seems to be: " if they were only a little bit smaller, they could really do some neat tricks". The top Chinese star, Ms. He (Isn't that some sort of contradiction?), is thought by all the semi-conscious, non-Chinese, people of the world to be 14 instead of the minimum 16 years of age. The IOC seems to think that pointing this fact out would somehow be in bad taste to the hosts. Taking the issue of competitor's size to it's logical extreme, it's really too bad that embryos are not allowed to compete. That might be interesting to watch. I guess the "right-to-life" folks just won't allow it.

How come we pay attention to the sports presented during the two weeks of the Olympics every four years, but totally ignore the same participants in many of the same sports the rest of the time? I don't know about you, but I'm not normally a big (beach or otherwise) volleyball fan. But, I really enjoyed the Olympic volleyball games, especially the women's beach version. Maybe it has something to do with their (lack of) uniforms. I don't recall watching any swimming events since 2004, but I think I watched all 8 of Michael Phelps' races, who, by the way, is built for nothing but swimming. I mean, what else can you do with those size 14 flippers, huge paddles, and extra long oars... oops, I meant to say, feet, hands and arms? And I know it's politically incorrect to say it, but, unfortunately, while I enjoyed the straight races, I never really got into the swing of synchronized swimming.

The performance of the Jamaican runners doesn't pass my smell test. How come they're so much better than everyone else this year? I read somewhere that they didn't have an anti-doping program established until 3 days after the Olympics Opening Ceremony. I wonder if that little tidbit has anything to do with their success. The Jamaican squad kind of brings back fond memories of the East Germans before the Wall came crashing down.

And, finally, did you check out Olympic boxing? It's nothing like the kind you see outside of the Olympics. The fighters wear these overstuffed pillows on their heads, leaving only their eyes, noses and chins exposed to the elements. You're supposed to get a point each time you bop one of the aforementioned opponent's body parts with the white-painted portion of your glove. No other form of contact counts. Something like 3 of 5 judges have to agree within one second that you did this for a point to be scored. The whole setup is ridiculous. 3 of 5 international referees can't agree on what to have for dinner, let alone something as fleeting as one of these scoring punches. You get some pretty weird scores as a result. I prefer the old-fashioned system of simply beating each other into a pulpy and bloody mess until one guy cries "Uncle".